This study was primarily aimed at developing an English-speaking proficiency test and analytic rubrics designed to measure speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates. On the basis of Littlewood's Methodological Framework and Long's Interaction Hypothesis, the researchers derived three speaking tasks from four sources: (a) syllabus of the…

This investigation explores oral proficiency outcomes in short-term study abroad programs, as well as the interaction of those outcomes with the type of second language (L2) courses involved. For three years, speaking ability gains were measured in a study abroad setting among intermediate learners of Spanish under two different course conditions:…

This paper attempts to establish that there is a correlation between the sociolinguistic identities of high school students and their productive English-speaking abilities. The paper initially explains the basic concept of sociolinguistic identity and refers to various aspects of research into Japanese national identity to analyse how these may…

This study fills the existing gap in the research, which indicates that few researchers have examined multilingual writers' preference between audio and written feedback, and the impact of feedback format on their revision process. However, this dissertation has five interrelated purposes: 1. To understand the expectations of multilingual writers…

This study examined the relationship between negative pragmatic transfer and language proficiency with reference to the refusal speech acts as realized by Yemeni learners of English as a Foreign Language (henceforth referred to as YLEs). Forty Yemeni learners of English (20 of low proficiency level and 20 of high proficiency level) and 2 baseline…

The "NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements for Intercultural Communication" (2017) task educators with helping students better recognize "obviously inappropriate behaviors in familiar everyday situations" (p.15), yet today's L2 classroom rarely includes pragmatic speech acts in curriculum, especially with regard to online language…

Recent research indicates that bilingual children are more proficient in resolving cognitive conflict than monolinguals. However, the replicability of such findings has been questioned, with poor control of participants' socioeconomic status (SES) as a possible confounding factor. Two experiments are reported here, in which the main attentional…

Throughout the world, tests are administered to some examinees who are not fully proficient in the language in which they are being tested. It has long been acknowledged that proficiency in the language in which a test is administered often affects examinees' performance on a test. Depending on the context and intended uses for a particular…

Reading achievement gaps are prominent in U.S. schools, most notably when comparing the performance of African American and Latino/Hispanic children to their White peers. Among the many reasons offered to explain and address these achievement gaps, language differences and language proficiency are primary considerations because many African…

This study seeks to further the research on online language learning by examining the level at which intermediate ESL students understand and process sociopragmatic information in their second language (L2) in globally networked environments like Twitter. In this semester-long study, L2 English learners from a variety of first languages (Chinese,…

Applying a mixed-methods design, this study aims to generate knowledge regarding decreasing study abroad involvement amongst Japanese students. Based on data collected from a group of first-year Japanese university students, the authors propose six qualities of a predominantly willing, or self-selecting, group of study abroad participants,…

The degree to which diverse score users can understand and consume information presented in score reports dictates whether they are able to draw reasonable conclusions. The goal of this study was to understand how parents (a particularly understudied and heterogeneous stakeholder population) make interpretations from a hypothetical interactive…

Since the 15th century, when the Turkish language initiated its adventure as a taught foreign language, we have come a long way. In a parallel way, with the increasing demand of Turkish as a Foreign Language (TFL), Turkish language pedagogy has been continuing to improve adjusting to the new trends in language teaching in the world. The ultimate…

Vocabulary learning has always been a great concern and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Among the vocabulary learning hypotheses, "involvement load hypothesis" and "technique feature analysis" have been proposed which attempt to bring some concepts like noticing, motivation, and generation into focus. In the…

Extensive reading has been continuously studied as a promising instructional method for improving students' language proficiency, including reading proficiency, vocabulary acquisition, and grammar awareness. The present study is a meta-analysis, which synthesized the data of 21 empirical studies (N = 1268). It was designed to explore whether…